Kosmos!

I've been playing Xenosaga III: Also sprach Zarathustra with the boy lately, and that combined with a glance at my long-dead Deviantart page inspired me to draw Kosmos again:


Long, long ago, when I first played the original Xenosaga, I decided to make a series of drawings of all the main characters... but I never made it past Kosmos. I think I might try again. I predict it won't get very far, though, because dang, I just like drawing Kosmos:


These are all the Kosmoses I've found on my hard drive. (Man, I love these retrospective things.)

In other news, acceptance from UT Austin, interviews with Michigan and Yale. Yay :)

More skirting adventures

Finished this several days ago, but never got a chance to take pictures and post... until now! Dun dun dunnnn.

EDIT: Picture removed, which pretty much makes this post pointless. Tough.

High-waisted straight skirt in 100% cotton. It even has a slip! I'm moving up in the tailoring world, awww yeah.

Skirting adventures will be on hold for now, though, because I broke my sewing machine needle trying to hem a pair of jeans. Oops. In the meantime, I'm planning to make some fashion drawings. Stay tuuuuuned!

I has maed a skirts!!

Tada!

[EDIT: Picture removed due to suck.]

You can't see in the picture, but the seams and hems are terrible! Nevertheless, it was a great learning experience and lots of fun (and I probably would have messed up less if my brother hadn't taken it upon himself to pester me the entire time). I now know that it's very important to plan ahead and that I should use an iron to flatten out seams before I try to finish them. All in all this took about 3 hours.

Tomorrow I hope to pick up some more fabric and some pinking shears for more fun skirting times.

Tailoring: 5/375?

Oil Painting

Slowly getting the hang of it. Much better than my first attempt, because 1) I like drawing people a lot more than drawing flowers, and 2) I had something to imitate, namely this painting by Aadi Salman:

(Although, now that I look at it, I'm pretty sure this was done on the computer, but uh... whatever!)

Right now I'm just trying out techniques, it's fun – next I might tackle some landscapes (with my trusty Monet book as a guide).

And just for fun, a detail shot:

Eyes are hard.

Dressmaking

I just bought this 1960s McCall's dress pattern from this Etsy store:

Lovely, no? I'm pretty excited. The plan is to tackle the poufy-skirted one. I'm not sure what fabric to use, but I'm thinking one of these two:


I'm kind of obsessed with fabric and tailoring now! You wouldn't think that seams and hems would be so interesting, and yet...

I'm going to make a skirt (from this book) first, though, because I'm still an absurd sewing n00b. Simple A-line with this Alexander Henry fabric:

All of these fabrics found at this Etsy store. Oh, Etsy, how I love thee.

Some drawings

Last night was a drawing extravaganza. First a progress report on that picture:


Both girls are finished and the living part of the bird is done, but I'm kind of dreading the gears part.

And two photoshop doodles – detail of one I call "Frida" and some silly fashionmagic elf concoction:


(I'm not sure I like the entirety of "Frida" so that's why you only get a detail shot.)


Trying to do more interesting stuff but it's not really working. Oil painting is still at a standstill. But it does feel good to be drawing again.

Some Art and Some Art Quackery

Some really neat photography by Steve Meisel for Vogue Italia's 'Patterns' editorial Spring 2007. Via Picdit. For all the editorial images (albeit with diminished picture quality), look here.


I get a Klimt vibe from the image of Meghan Collison that's featured in the limited edition jigsaw puzzle (what could be better?):


Mostly because of the face angle, I think. Reminds me of "Judith I." The pose of the model's left arm even matches! Although Judith was holding Holofernes' head, and not, uh, her boob. But hey, big black hair and everything. And "decorative" is pretty much synonymous with Klimt.


I was going to write some jibberish about Klimt's elevating/conflating of woman's sexuality and power and gender photography, but honesty that summary sounds pretentious enough.

P.S. If you have not yet experienced PETA's new "Sea Kitten" campaign, click this link, click on "Sea Kitten Stores," and prepare to laugh/lament the sordid state of your fellow man.

Besides, you can make your own tranvestite/down-on-his-luck-former-rock-star/Fu Manchu-bearing prostitute fish–er, sea kitten!

Awkward

Long time no post. Here is a doodle of Haleigh and Hisa. I was commissioned by a choir friend to draw a picture for their wedding invitations, and I liked the proposed pose so much that I recycled it (but I replaced all the love with awkwardness):

Pertinent things from the last weeks: lovely Vogue photo spreads (next post), Grand Canyon and giant trees (pictures forthcoming), oil painting (it's hard), tailoring (lvl 0/375), Dear Catastrophe Waitress (excellent album), hand-me-downs from mom (so 80s), The Tain (epic), and Auditorium (really neat game concept).

Draw draw draw.